Load Balancing vs Priority Load Balancing

Load Balancing prevents overcapacity, by distributing the available capacity equally over all charging points at a given location. Yet, there's a difference between standard load balancing and priority load balancing.

Load Balancing

Load Balancing prevents overcapacity, by distributing the available capacity equally over all charging points at a given location. This makes it an indispensable Smart Charging feature for anyone that operates multiple charging points at a location with limited power capacity. If this situation is applicable to you, EVBox and your installer can offer you this service upon request.

Here's how it works in practice:

There are 5 charging points at this facility. There are 4 cars charging. This facility has 30 kW available in total. We always make use of the full capacity. So in this case, 4 cars start charging at 7,4 kW each.

The 5th car enters and needs to charge at a minimum of 7,4 kW. This would require an availability of 37 kW in total. But we only have an availability of 30kW in total. How do we solve this?

We distribute the full available power, equally over the 5 cars. In this case, each car now starts charging at 6kW. But the 5th car needs to charge at a minimum of 7,4 kW. So what happens next?

Because we make use of the full capacity, the 5th car won’t be able to charge, until one of the other cars stops charging. Rest assured, we found a solution to this problem. Please read on to see how Priority Load Balancing works.

Priority Load Balancing

Priority Load Balancing distributes the available capacity in a more flexible manner than the "traditional" Load Balancing. This means that the 5th car in the infographic above, will now be able to start charging right away, even if the scenario remains exactly the same.

For the end-user, Priority Load Balancing influences the way the car's charging, as well as the LED status indication and any in-app notifications that informs the end-user of his/her charging status. Here's how it works in practice:

There are 5 charging points at this facility. There are 4 cars charging. This facility has 30kW available in total. We always make use of the full capacity. So in this case, 4 cars start charging at 7,4 kW each.

The 5th car enters and needs to charge at a minimum of 7,4 kW. This would require an availability of 37 kW in total. But we only have an availability of 30 kW in total. How do we solve this?

We evaluate the charging status of each car within just 2 minutes. Now we see that the 2nd car has consumed the most. So we queue the 2nd car, to allow the 5th car to start charging. NOTE: If your car is queued, the LED ring flashes yellow. Your car app notifies you that your car has stopped charging. Don’t be alarmed, your car will start charging again shortly.

Once every +/- 15mins, we evaluate the charging status of each car again. This time, we see that the 1st car is fully charged. So we release the 2nd car from the queue. The 2nd car starts charging again.